A self healing network (SHN) distributed restoration algorithm (DRA) restores traffic that has been disrupted by a fault in a telecommunications network by finding an alternate route (alt route) to carry the traffic to bypass the fault. Such SHN DRA scheme is amply described by the aforenoted co-pending applications. In brief, the alt route is established by interconnecting a number of spare links connecting different nodes of the network so that traffic may be rerouted through those spare links. These spare links may be referred to as spare capacity and they are purposely added to the telecommunications network to provide the network the ability to perform restoration. But this spare capacity has to be somewhat limited due mostly to economic considerations. Thus if, after restoration, the network were to remain in the topology which includes the use of the spare links, the ability of the network to restore traffic due to other failures is curtailed. In other words, the spare capacity provides a safety margin for distributed restoration to take place. Yet once the spare capacity or some portion of it has been used, the safety margin could be diminished to the point that it no longer exists unless the topology of the network is restored to its normal state, i.e. prior to the failure, so that subsequent restorations may be effected with confidence for future failures.
Currently, when there is an outage due to a malfunctioned fiber, once the fiber is repaired, technicians have to manually reconnect at each of the cross-connect switches of the telecommunications network the different working and spare links. And the technicians at each of the cross-connect switches that might have been affected by the malfunctioned fiber need to refer to a pre-plan drafted in anticipation of the fault and follow instructions therein to connect/disconnect the various ports of the switch, in order to return the cross connect switch to its pre-failure state. Needless to say, this process is quite laborious and is subject to operator mistakes, not to mention requiring a substantial amount of repair time.